Smalls is a premium DTC cat food and cat lifestyle brand built on a single belief: the cats who matter most to their people deserve food that actually reflects that. We make fresh, human-grade food for cats, and we've spent eight years building a brand that looks and feels as considered as the product inside the bag.
We're looking for a Financial Analyst to sit at the intersection of finance and operations, providing financial analysis, reporting, and business partnering across functions. You'll support and provide leverage to our Strategic Finance Manager, particularly on core recurring and strategic forecasting and planning work — turning business strategy into numbers leadership can trust.
This is an individual contributor role with a growth path to Senior Analyst, for someone who wants FP&A to inform operational and strategic decisions at a time to actually effect change, not after the fact.
This is the person who takes ownership of the recurring FP&A engine so our Strategic Finance Manager can spend more time on strategic work. You'll own components of the budgeting and in-year re-forecast cycle end to end — data gathering, financial modeling, and variance analysis — and support financial close by producing source materials and coordinating accurate, timely accruals with cross-functional partners. You'll also build out the automated reporting and FP&A processes that let a lean finance team punch above its weight, leveraging AI tools, FP&A software, or both.
A generalist role — this requires explicit finance and financial modeling experience, not broad operational exposure. That said, some appetite to flex beyond core FP&A for ad-hoc analysis is a plus — the line is finance grounding, not rigidity.
An over-indexed strategic seat — the team already has strong strategic thinking; this role needs someone tactical and methodical who can own the mechanics of forecasting and reporting.
You hold a Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, or a related field.
You have 2–4 years of experience in financial analysis, FP&A, accounting, or a related analytical role.
Your Excel and financial modeling skills are advanced — you can build a forecast and variance analysis from scratch.
You have a solid grasp of the three financial statements and the drivers behind them; you can connect operational KPIs to financial line items.
You are a strong communicator who can explain a variance to non-finance stakeholders and collaborate effectively with partners across a range of financial backgrounds — we're a lean team with no translation layer, so this matters especially in partnering closely with Operations.
Nice to have:
Familiarity with AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) and experience automating finance-specific workflows or otherwise using AI to improve your output.
BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) and/or a planning tool (Vena, Pigment, Data Rails, Cube).
ERP exposure. (Netsuite) — if coming from the accounting side, auditing exposure is preferred over implementation exposure.)
Consumer/CPG/DTC experience.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls has built something rare: a subscription-first pet food business with genuine customer love, durable unit economics, and a retail expansion underway. We've grown from a pure-play DTC brand into an omni-channel operation, and the financial complexity has grown with us: subscription cohorts alongside wholesale margin structures, a perishable supply chain, a growing retail footprint, and a financing facility that requires active stewardship.
The CFO who built this infrastructure is stepping back. What we need now is someone who has lived inside a consumer business at scale, has managed the tension between growth and profitability and, at least once, sat at the closing table for a significant transaction. In short, not a career dealmaker but rather a career operator who has done deals.
This person will be the senior financial executive of the company — end accountable for financial results across the business, the health of the balance sheet, the discipline of the operating plan, and the readiness of the business for its next chapter.
The CFO leads two functions: Finance, managed day-to-day by the SVP Strategic Finance and encompassing FP&A, operating model, cohort analytics, and board financial materials; and Accounting, managed day-to-day by the Director of Accounting and encompassing general ledger, close, GAAP financial statements, accounts payable/receivable, payroll, and external audit. Both functions report directly to the CFO.
Direct the annual operating plan process, including revenue and contribution margin targets by channel, headcount planning, operating expense budgets, and capital expenditure schedules; present the approved plan to the board of directors
End responsibility for development and fidelity of the rolling forecast, incorporating actuals-to-plan variance analysis across P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow; translate variance findings into forward-looking operational recommendations
End responsibility (in partnership with the CRO) for unit economics management and threshold-setting: CAC and payback period by acquisition channel, cohort LTV curves, contribution margin by SKU and channel, gross margin by co-manufacturer, and blended LTV:CAC ratio; establish and hold thresholds that govern ongoing acquisition investment decisions
Design and direct omnichannel P&L architecture — particularly retail and wholesale margin reporting inclusive of trade spend, slotting, co-op, spoilage, and incremental fulfillment costs; evaluate new retail placements against defined return and payback thresholds
Drive financial accountability with supply chain and operations on co-manufacturing cost structure, freight and fulfillment cost-per-order, inventory turn targets, and the financial implications of formulation or sourcing changes
Oversee variance analysis against plan and forecast across all cost centers; develop and implement corrective action plans where performance deviates materially from targets
Design and manage capital allocation decisions across the business — marketing channel investment, CapEx (freezer infrastructure, co-manufacturing capacity, ERP and systems), new SKU development, geographic expansion — against established ROI and payback thresholds
Own the financial systems roadmap — ERP, OMS, and EDI — ensuring infrastructure supports accurate multi-channel and multi-category profitability reporting as the business scales
Define and own the company's path to positive operating cash flow: establish milestones, identify the cost structure and revenue productivity levers required to achieve them, and track progress against plan
Own the accuracy and timeliness of GAAP financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows
Oversee monthly and annual close process through the Director of Accounting; ensure close completes within established timelines with full account reconciliation and variance commentary
Maintain documented accounting policies covering all judgment-sensitive areas: revenue recognition, subscription deferred revenue, lease accounting (ASC 842), warrant liability treatment, inventory valuation, and co-manufacturing accruals
Design and maintain an internal controls environment appropriate for a VC-backed, pre-transaction business; ensure controls are audit-ready and consistently applied
Own the external audit relationship; oversee preparation of audited financial statements and coordinate timely completion of the annual audit and required tax filings
Oversee sales tax compliance, indirect tax obligations, and regulatory reporting requirements across all operating states and channels
End responsible for accurate 13-week and rolling cash flow forecasting; maintain visibility into cash conversion cycle dynamics specific to perishable goods, including inventory carrying costs, AP payment terms, subscription billing timing, and retail payment lag
Evaluate, structure, and manage non-dilutive financing instruments as the business scales, including inventory-based facilities, receivables factoring, and revenue-based financing alternatives
Optimize working capital across AP, AR, and inventory; develop and implement programs to improve days payable outstanding, reduce inventory days on hand, and accelerate cash conversion
End responsible for financial materials for the board of directors, including operating results, variance to plan, updated forecasts, liquidity position, and key risk factors
Serve as the primary management liaison to the audit committee; maintain responsibility for all financial representations made to the board
Oversee cap table management, equity administration, and all board-level financial disclosures in coordination with legal counsel
Build independent relationships with board members as a financial steward — not as a proxy for the CEO, but as the board's own trusted source on the integrity of financial representations, risk posture, and governance
Transaction readiness is a consequence of running the business well, not a separate workstream. The CFO who keeps clean books, maintains defensible accounting judgments, and manages toward durable unit economics is the CFO who makes a transaction go smoothly.
Maintain the business in a continuous state of transaction readiness: clean audited financials, documented accounting policies, reconciled cap table, and no unresolved quality of earnings exposure
Serve as CFO-level financial principal in any M&A, recapitalization, or secondary transaction process: lead quality of earnings preparation and defense, own rep & warranty positioning, and execute purchase price adjustment and working capital peg frameworks
Lead financial due diligence on potential acquisition or strategic partnership opportunities; develop and present buy-side financial thesis and integration cost analysis to the CEO and board
Develop capital structure recommendations — equity, debt, earnout, and rollover structures — in advance of and during any transaction process
SVP Strategic Finance — the SVP owns the operating model, FP&A infrastructure, board financial materials, cohort and investor-grade reporting, and analytical partnership to the CEO and COO. This is a highly capable executive with deep context on the business. The CFO sets financial philosophy and signs off on outputs; the SVP builds and maintains the analytical engine.
Director of Accounting — the Director of Accounting owns the day-to-day close process, GL management, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, and external audit coordination. The CFO owns the controls environment and audit relationship at the executive level; the Director executes the work.
Experience with physical/inventory businesses. A SaaS or purely digital background will not translate to the complexity of a perishable goods supply chain, retail margin structures, and working capital dynamics at Smalls.
Transaction experience (principal role). Has served as the CFO-level financial principal in at least one completed sell-side M&A transaction, recapitalization, or significant financing. Demonstrated ownership of quality of earnings preparation, purchase price mechanics, and closing documentation — not advisory or supporting participation.
Growth-stage operating experience. Has served as CFO at a consumer, CPG, DTC, or subscription business at meaningful scale ($75M–$300M) and scaled revenue significantly under their financial leadership; has built or substantially rebuilt FP&A infrastructure, management reporting, and financial controls in a high-growth environment.
Systems infrastructure leadership. Has led or co-led at least one full-cycle ERP implementation or migration (NetSuite, SAP, or equivalent), inclusive of chart of accounts design, process mapping, data migration, and go-live. Experience with OMS and EDI systems in an omnichannel or CPG context is a strong plus — Smalls operates across DTC, e-tail, and retail, and the CFO will be expected to own the financial systems roadmap across all three.
Demonstrated operational financial outcomes. Has a verifiable record of improving business results outside of a transaction or fundraise — examples include achieving positive operating cash flow, executing a cost structure reduction, materially improving gross margin, or leading a financial turnaround. Can articulate the specific levers they controlled and the quantified outcomes achieved.
People leadership in a lean, high-stakes environment. Has a track record of developing finance talent — not just managing it. The team you'll inherit is capable and deeply embedded in the business. They need a CFO who makes them better, not one who creates a ceiling above them. If your instinct is to consolidate decision-making rather than build judgment in your team, this isn't the right seat.
Genuine comfort with lean. Smalls' finance function is intentionally small: a CFO, an SVP Strategic Finance, a Director of Accounting, and a handful of supporting roles. This is not a gap to be filled — it's a structural choice. The right CFO is energized by this, not quietly planning a headcount expansion. If you've spent your career managing large teams and derive authority from org size, this will be a frustrating mismatch. If you want to thrive in a lean environment and know how to punch above your weight, it will feel like a feature.
Experience in pet, food, subscription CPG, or other perishable goods categories
Deep familiarity with omnichannel or retail-expanding DTC businesses — having navigated the transition from DTC-first to omnichannel with both a retail and e-tail component
Background in investment banking or private equity with a subsequent track record as a full-function operating CFO
Experience managing a debt facility with active covenant compliance and lender reporting
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls is on a mission to make nine lives ten, building a brand that genuinely improves the lives of cats and their people. Today, many of the cat people who find Smalls find us on Meta. It's our largest acquisition channel and we’re looking for someone to fully own it.
You will fully own Paid Social performance from top to bottom. You’ll drive profitable growth by setting a sharp channel strategy and executing it in platform. You’ll be expected to run a highly efficient engine, make smart bets, and communicate performance insights clearly at all levels of the business.
This isn't a role for someone who wants to direct an agency from a dashboard, and it isn't a first time job.This is a hands-on, in-platform role for a seasoned operator who treats Meta as a craft: you know how the auction actually behaves, you have strong opinions about account structure and placement mix, and you can tell the difference between real performance signals and noise.
Own the channel end to end. You’ll drive budget, pacing, forecasting, campaign architecture, in-channel creative strategy, bidding, audiences, placement mix — the full stack of decisions that drive our largest paid channel. You'll be accountable for acquiring high quality customers at efficient CACs.
Optimize for customer quality, not just cost. You'll be responsible for driving against both volume & quality targets — conversions, customer retention, LTV — and you'll tune targeting, creative selection, and bidding toward cohorts that stay, even when that makes the topline CAC number look worse in the short run.
Bring the channel in house. Lead the transition from our hybrid agency model to full internal ownership, leading hands-on account management with ad ops support.
Own creative performance in-channel. Collaborate closely with the Growth Creative Strategist on translating our creative strategy to Meta — determine how we bring our value props to life, testing strategy, and the audience × message × format judgment behind those calls. You'll feed your channel's signals back into the system so wins travel beyond your channel.
Own the measurement, skeptically. Keep our signal quality strong (CAPI, event match quality, AEM), reconcile platform reporting against internal attribution, and contribute to incrementality work — geo holdouts, lift studies — so we're spending against what really drives performance, not what Meta says is real.
You've run Meta at scale. You've personally managed seven-figure monthly Meta budgets, ideally at a DTC subscription or ecommerce brand, with deep hands on keys experience, not through an agency. You know firsthand how differently the platform behaves at that level of spend than at a fraction of it.
You have experience with subscription business and understand the dynamics you instinctively evaluate performance through retention and LTV, not just cost per conversion.
You're rigorous about reporting & tech. You design clean tests and you can tell a genuine performance signal from attribution noise. CAPI, EMQ, attribution windows, and view-through dynamics are familiar ground.
You have in-channel creative judgment. You understand why an ad wins for a given audience in a given placement, and you can operate within a shared creative strategy, making it perform in your channel without needing to own the whole system.
You communicate with clarity. You can explain a CPM spike to the exec team without hiding behind jargon, and you say what you think the account needs, directly.
You're a cat person. You care about cats and the people who love them, and you're genuinely excited to build for this community.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls is a premium DTC cat food and cat lifestyle brand built on a single belief: the cats who matter most to their people deserve food that actually reflects that. We make fresh, human-grade food for cats, and we’ve spent eight years building a brand that looks and feels as considered as the product inside the bag.
We’re looking for a Senior Integrated Marketing Manager. You’ll own the roadmap that guides every interaction where Smalls shows up. You’ll also manage the content calendar, set the standard for creative briefs, and build the system that turns performance into learning. Across paid and organic channels, you’ll decide what Smalls should say and why. When a message breaks through, you’ll help the company understand what it tells us about our customer and put that insight to work.
This role calls for judgment built through experience. You can move between fast-moving channel work and larger brand moments without losing the thread. Channel leaders see you as a peer, and creative teams trust your direction. As a hands-on senior individual contributor and player-coach, you raise the quality of the work without needing to make or manage every piece yourself.
Own the integrated creative roadmap and content calendar. Give Smalls one clear view of what we are saying across the brand. For each important moment, you’ll set the high-level creative goal and choose the audience and angle. You’ll then partner with the creative team to shape how that idea comes to life across paid and organic channels. You’ll keep timing and status current, surface dependencies, and help teams adjust as priorities change.
Set the creative learning agenda. Turn the most important customer and business questions into clear learning objectives. Should we lead with longevity or nutritional value? Would another creative format work better in a particular channel? You’ll decide what we need to learn next and ensure that question shapes the roadmap and briefs. Channel and analytics specialists can guide the methodology. You own what it means for the creative.
Build the creative learning and feedback system. Connect the work we plan to the results we see. Channel owners remain accountable for performance. You’ll work with them to understand what the creative contributed and translate that into useful feedback. Then you’ll share the learning across channels and feed it into the next roadmap. Over time, this system will give Smalls a clearer view of the customer and improve every creative decision.
Lead ideation and briefing as a player-coach. Develop the core idea, message, and hook for major initiatives. Set a clear standard for briefs, then help channel owners apply it to their work. They will draft most channel-specific briefs. You will QA and approve every brief before production begins. If an idea is unclear, too familiar, or wrong for the channel, you’ll send it back and help make it stronger.
Drive creative within our brand-led messaging architecture. Ground every idea in customer truth and a clear business goal. Know who our most valuable customers are, understand the competitive context, and make sure our claims have proof behind them. Help each team adapt an idea for its channel instead of using one creative playbook everywhere.
Carry learning across the customer experience. What works in one place should improve the rest of the journey. Turn creative insights into recommendations across the customer experience, from landing pages and lifecycle to retail and packaging. Partner with the owners of those areas to make the work stronger and more consistent.
Bring the Marketing, Product & Creative departments together around the customer. Build trust across functions and create alignment without formal authority. Help each team start from a shared understanding of the customer. The work should feel right for its channel and unmistakably Smalls.
Protect strategic quality through execution. Stay close enough to the work to ensure the final creative delivers on the brief. Review it at key moments and flag gaps early. You care deeply that creative arrives on time, in full, and as expected. Production partners own the process of getting it there. You own the strategic bar and help resolve issues before they weaken the work.
You’ve done this long enough to see the patterns. You have 8+ years of experience in creative strategy, integrated marketing, or a closely related field at a brand-driven company. Your work has spanned paid and organic channels. You’ve seen enough creative succeed and fail that your instincts are earned, and you can tell a lasting truth from a passing trend.
You use data and instinct together. You’re comfortable reading channel performance and customer feedback. You can separate a durable insight from a noisy result, then use what you learn to ask a better question or strengthen the creative. You do not need to be the statistician in the room, but you do need to know what the numbers can teach us about the customer.
You’re a capital-M marketer with strong creative instincts. You understand how people, products, and markets fit together. You can define a useful persona, find a sharp value proposition, and turn customer insight into a credible creative idea. Your instincts are grounded in strategy.
You think across channels and know how to code-switch. You can adapt a shared strategy to very different contexts, from fast digital work to larger brand moments. You judge each channel on its own terms rather than pushing the same format everywhere.
You make strategy usable. You can turn a roadmap into a working calendar and a learning objective into a strong brief. When results come back, you make them easy for others to find and use. The systems you build keep the company from relearning the same lessons.
You have taste and brand sensitivity. You can improve response without losing the brand. You make work clearer and more effective without making it generic. Creative teams trust your judgment because you respect their craft.
You lead without the org chart. You’re willing to challenge unclear thinking and generous enough to help others improve it. You can drive alignment without formal authority. People follow your direction because it is thoughtful and clear.
You’re a cat person. You care about cats and the people who love them, and you’re genuinely excited to build for this community.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls is a premium DTC cat food and cat lifestyle brand built on a single belief: the cats who matter most to their people deserve food that actually reflects that. We make fresh, human-grade food for cats, and we've spent eight years building a brand that looks and feels as considered as the product inside the bag.
We're hiring a Product Manager to own how new customers discover, evaluate, and buy Smalls. This role sits right at the intersection of product and marketing — you'll treat our conversion funnel as your product, run experiments at high velocity, and think in terms of customer segments and experiences rather than just funnel steps. We're a lean team, so you'll also jump into platform work and whatever else needs doing when it’s the highest-leverage work.
Funnel ownership and experimentation. Own the conversion funnel from first site visit through first box. Find the friction, form hypotheses, ship improvements, and drive sustainable new-customer growth. You'll run our experimentation program at a high tempo — a prioritized backlog of A/B tests and landing page experiments, shipped constantly, with a real record of what won, what lost, and why.
Marketing and data partnership. You'll work the seam between marketing and product, partnering on our tracking and signals layer — attribution, pixel and event quality, MarTech tooling. You'll design for segments, not just steps, using behavior data and customer feedback to build experiences personalized to who someone is, not just where they are in the funnel.
Commerce evolution. You'll help shape how purchasing works at Smalls as we grow beyond subscription into one-time purchase and new commerce paths.
Platform and execution. You're a force multiplier — when a high-priority problem shows up, including platform or internal tooling work, you scope it fast and drive it to completion, partnering closely with engineering on tradeoffs between speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
End-to-end scope. CRO — on-site experience, LP testing, and the experimentation program — is yours start to finish, alongside MarTech tooling and the tracking/signals layer (with marketing), and e-commerce purchase paths, including one-time purchase as we evolve.
Conversion funnel ownership. Own the end-to-end conversion funnel, executing data-driven product strategies to lift CVR and AOV while improving core unit economics.
You have a strong A/B testing track record and think in hypotheses, not hunches.
You understand marketing signals infrastructure — attribution, pixels, event quality — well enough to improve it, not just work around it.
You've run real CRO programs with LP testing, and you know e-commerce fundamentals cold: PDP, CLP, checkout.
You learn fast, decide with partial information, and get energized by a broad remit rather than overwhelmed by it.
You're a strong executor — someone who drives projects, not just plans them.
You come from a digitally native retailer with a strong digital product, not big tech.
Nice to have: subscription DTC experience, Shopify, SQL/analytics tooling fluency (Heap, Segment), and personalization or segmentation experience.
You'll partner closely with Marketing on tracking, attribution, and MarTech, and with Engineering on technical tradeoffs across speed, quality, and long-term maintainability. You'll report to the Sr. Director, Product. This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports — built for someone who wants ownership and impact, not headcount.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone's lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls is a premium DTC cat food and cat lifestyle brand built on a single belief: the cats who matter most to their people deserve food that actually reflects that. We make fresh, human-grade food for cats, and we've spent eight years building a brand that looks and feels as considered as the product inside the bag.
We're looking for an FSQA Associate to own the execution engine behind our food safety and quality program — the routine testing, hold/release decisions, and CS quality triage that keep product moving safely across our co-man and 3PL network. You'll be the first line of defense on quality, keeping a complex, high-volume operational program on schedule so the Sr. Manager, FSQA can focus on strategy, investigations, and regulatory judgment calls.
This is for someone who is meticulous, comfortable with high-volume documentation, communicative across many stakeholders (co-mans, labs, 3PLs, ops), and energized by keeping a complex operational program on schedule.
This is the person who keeps Smalls' FSQA program running day to day: scheduling and tracking routine production testing across every SKU and co-man, making hold/release calls, triaging quality complaints from Customer Support, and maintaining the documentation and data the rest of the FSQA function depends on. You're the first line of triage for quality issues across co-mans, 3PLs, and customer-facing channels — escalating to the Sr. Manager, FSQA for investigation sign-off and food safety judgment calls, not making those calls yourself.
An owner of investigation sign-off or food safety judgment calls — assembles the evidence and drafts the packet, but the Sr. Manager, FSQA holds final authority on holds, releases, withdrawals, and investigation outcomes.
Schedule and coordinate micro testing across all SKUs (smooth/ground, pulled, freeze-dried, lickable, broth, treats).
Generate and track lab submission forms for micro tests; manage the end-to-end cycle from sample collection through lab turnaround, results review, and release.
Execute hold/release decisions across all SKUs each month.
Review cutting forms, log results, send release emails, and maintain release records.
Coordinate production verification and nutritional testing each month.
Monitor the CS-Food channel as the primary QA point of contact.
Triage incoming complaints within hours: classify severity, request additional info from CS, and determine whether an issue is cosmetic, food safety, or requires a formal investigation.
Resolve low-complexity complaints directly with CS; escalate food safety and high-impact issues to the Sr. Manager, FSQA with a clean handoff packet.
Own complaint response SLAs — triage within hours, resolution within 2–3 days for non-investigation issues.
Open and document formal quality investigations under the direction of the Sr. Manager, FSQA.
Gather supporting evidence: lab results, batch records, cutting forms, supplier COAs, and CS complaint history.
Coordinate with co-mans and suppliers to collect root cause data.
Draft investigation reports and CAPA documentation for the Sr. Manager, FSQA's review and sign-off.
Support food safety investigations (e.g., micro, raw materials, food production records)
Log all test results, hold/release decisions, and complaint data into the internal compliant trackers.
Maintain the co-man and supplier quality document library — chase certificates, food safety docs, EPR packaging info, and keep documents current.
Produce the weekly QA digest (internal compliant trackers, CS-Food channel summary, weekly team meeting highlights).
Pull data inputs for the Sr. Manager, FSQA's period reporting and trend analyses.
Participate in co-man and 3PL quality calls as the standing QA representative.
Handle communication with 3PLs — hold/release instructions, tickets, and sample inspections.
Communicate with the CS team to address customer food quality inquiries and complaints, providing investigation results and feedback.
You hold a Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Animal Science, or a related field.
You have 1–3 years of experience in a food, beverage, or pet food QA role.
You have working knowledge of micro testing protocols (APC, listeria, salmonella, E. coli) and lab coordination workflows.
You are strong communicator — comfortable working across co-mans, labs, CS, and internal ops via Slack and email.
You have demonstrated attention to detail with high-volume documentation work.
You are comfortable with ambiguity and the operational tempo of a fast-growing CPG.
You're willing to travel
Nice to have:
HACCP and/or PCQI certification.
Prior experience with co-man networks and SARF/cutting form workflows.
Pet food, fresh food, or freeze-dried manufacturing experience.
Exposure to investigation/CAPA methodology.
Comfort with AI-assisted workflows.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.
Smalls is on a mission to make nine lives ten, building a brand and a digital experience that cat people genuinely love. Our website and product aren't just a storefront; they're the clearest expression of who we are and the engine of our growth. This role owns both.
We're looking for a VP of Product & Engineering to set the vision for our digital product, digital experience, and the technology that powers them — and to be accountable for the business results that vision delivers. Reporting to Ed (SVP, Growth & Data), you'll sit on the leadership team and act as the connective tissue between what we want the business to become and what we build to get there.
Define a multi-year vision for our digital product and the platform beneath it, and turn it into a roadmap the team can rally around.
Decide where to invest, what to build, and how team resourcing and tech stack need to shift to support that roadmap.
Tie every call to the long-term vision and financial goals of the overall business in a way that is clear and motivating for the teams you lead.
Hold the vision and the bar for everything a customer touches once they reach us — the onsite experience, paths to purchase and checkout, the account and subscription experience, and the product surfaces that keep them coming back.
Bring a real perspective on how UX, merchandising, and onsite flows shape behavior, and make sure the experience we ship reflects the brand at its best.
Own the product and experience metrics that ladder up to revenue — conversion, AOV, LTV, retention — and feel personally accountable for the topline you influence.
Bring that commercial lens into every prioritization decision; be as fluent in the economics of the business as in the product.
Build a shared agenda with Marketing across acquisition, retention, and reactivation.
Bring a strong point of view on how product and brand compound each other to grow the business.
Set the technical direction and build an org that ships with quality and speed.
Make the build-vs-buy and platform calls, keep the stack healthy, and make sure engineering is pointed squarely at what matters most.
Attract, develop, and motivate a cross-functional product and engineering org.
Get the best out of your people, put resources where they'll have the most impact, and create a culture where ambitious builders do the best work of their careers.
You lead with a point of view: you arrive with a bold, well-formed take on the experience and where it should go. You can describe a future others can't yet see and build the organizational conviction to chase it — while staying honest enough to update when the evidence says you're wrong.
You start from the customer: your strategy is grounded in a genuine understanding of who you're building for. You use data, testing, and research to sharpen your bets, not to make them for you.
You're commercial: you think in business outcomes and are comfortable being measured by them. You can articulate the tradeoff between a long-term experience investment and this quarter's number to anyone in the building, including the board.
You've scaled consumer commerce: you've built and grown across DTC subscription and traditional ecommerce, and understand what changes when a subscription-first business opens up to one-time purchase and subscribe-and-save. You know the modern DTC stack well, Shopify included, and carry enough technical depth to set engineering direction and earn your engineers' trust.
You operate at the product–marketing seam: you've owned the place where growth, brand, and product meet, and know how to make those functions pull in the same direction.
You're a builder of teams: an exceptional people leader who attracts strong talent, manages resources with judgment, and creates the conditions for a team to do its best work.
You communicate with clarity: your team and peers always understand the why behind the roadmap. You can go deep enough to debate architecture with engineers and high enough to align the exec team.
You have the track record to back it up — 12+ years (or equivalent) across product and technology leadership, with proof you've set strategy, led teams, and grown the metrics that matter.
You're a cat person: you care about cats and the people who love them, and you're genuinely excited to build for this community.
You lead with gut and opinion, and validate with data — not the reverse; purely analytical, data-first decision-making is not the right fit for this seat.
Your orientation is closer to a GM of ecom than a features-focused PM — you've owned broad commercial outcomes, not just a narrow conversion/CRO scope.
Subscription and Shopify experience are strong signals.
Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.
People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.
Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.
Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.
Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.
Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.
Free Product: Free cat food every month.